Tag: slavery

San Francisco mayor sneaks through reparations bill just before Christmas that could give each black resident $5MILLION

The mayor of San Francisco discreetly approved a bill to create a fund that may eventually grant each of the city’s eligible black residents $5 million in reparations. 

Mayor Daniel Lurie quietly signed the incredibly divisive Reparations Bill just two days before Christmas. 

The ordinance establishes a Reparations Fund, as recommended by the city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC) in its 2023 report. 

The legislation merely establishes the fund but does not allocate any money to it – setting up the framework for any future contributions, whether they be through the city or privately donated.

The AARAC is tasked with developing ‘recommendations for repairing harm in our black communities,’ according to its website. 

Per the 2023 report, every African American adult in San Francisco should be handed a $5 million lump sum to ‘compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced.’

While this effort has captured the most attention – and sparked the most controversy – the AARAC rattled off more than 100 suggestions, including debt relief, guaranteed annual income of $97,000, debt forgiveness and city-funded homes for black people. 

In 2023, the conservative public policy think tank Hoover Institution said the plan would cost each non-African American household in the city about $600,000 in tax dollars. 

However, Lurie told the Daily Mail that this is not the case, citing the city’s struggling finances. 

‘For several years, communities across the city have been working with the government to acknowledge the decades of harm done to San Francisco’s black community,’ Lurie wrote. 

‘While that process largely predates my administration, I am signing the legislation to create this fund in recognition of the work of so many San Franciscans and the unanimous support of the Board of Supervisors.’

But Lurie said the city is bracing for a $1 billion budget deficit next year.

Keep reading

Maryland to consider slavery reparations after Gov. Wes Moore’s veto is overridden

Maryland will create a commission to study potential reparations for slavery after lawmakers voted Tuesday to override a veto by Gov. Wes Moore — currently the nation’s only Black governor — that disappointed many fellow Democrats.

Moore said in his veto letter in May that it was a difficult decision to veto the bill, which was a priority of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland. But he wrote there has been enough study of the legacy of slavery, and it was now time to “focus on the work itself” to address it.

But Democrats who control both chambers of the Maryland General Assembly decided the commission was needed to better examine how to do that.

“This topic isn’t easy, but, again, without formal study, reparations risk being dismissed as symbolic or unconstitutional, regardless of moral merit,” said Sen. Charles Sydnor, a Democrat.

After his veto was overridden, Moore said that while he disagrees with the legislature’s decision, “I am eager to move forward in partnership on the work of repair that we all agree is an urgent and pressing need.”

“I believe the time for action is now — and we must continue moving forward with the work of repair immediately,” Moore said in a statement. “That mission is especially vital given the immediate and ongoing effects of this federal administration on our constituents, including communities that have been historically left behind.”

Potential reparations outlined in the bill include official statements of apology, monetary compensation, property tax rebates, social service assistance, as well as licensing and permit fee waivers and reimbursement. Reparations also could include assistance with making a down payment on a home, business incentives, childcare, debt forgiveness and tuition payment waivers for higher education.

Maryland’s Black population is about 30%, the highest percentage of any state outside of the Deep South.

Support for reparations gained momentum in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. However, the issue has been a difficult one, particularly for high-profile Democrats, and comes amid a broader conservative backlash over how race, history and inequality are handled in public institutions.

“At a time of growing attacks on diversity and equity, today’s action reaffirms our shared commitment to truth-telling, accountability, and meaningful progress for Black Marylanders,” the state’s Legislative Black Caucus said in a statement.

Keep reading

Congress quietly moves US closer to military draft

A provision in this year’s NDAA will require the Selective Service System (SSS) to find a way to make registering for the draft automatic instead of letting 18-year-old males sign up themselves, which is current practice.

The SSS would have a year to try to construct a list of all potential draftees in the U.S. by pooling information from other Federal databases. “Automatic” draft registration will start a year after the 2026 NDAA is signed into law, unless the Selective Service is repealed before then.

This doesn’t mean that a draft is being activated right away, or that those registered will be sent induction orders — although preparing to do so is the sole purpose of making this list. This will, however, be the largest change in Selective Service law since 1980, and will move the U.S. closer to activation of a draft than at any time in the last half century.

To be sure, “automatic” registration is a response to a growing recognition that the current system is an abject failure in the face of pervasive noncompliance.

Few young men register voluntarily with the SSS, and almost none of them report their new addresses to the SSS each time they move. As a result, the current database is so incomplete and inaccurate that it would be “less than useless” for an actual draft, according to Bernard Rostker, who was Director of the Selective Service System from 1979-1981, testifying in 2019.The obvious congressional response would be to end the registration program and abolish the Selective Service System as a failure and unfit for its stated purpose, even if one supports a draft.

But neither Democrats nor Republicans seem willing to let go of their fantasies of a ready-to-go draftee list, which will allow them to plan for endless, unlimited wars without having to worry about whether enough Americans will be willing to fight them. Keeping conscription on a hair-trigger, like keeping nuclear weapons on a hair-trigger, allows these weapons to be used as part of the arsenal of U.S. military and diplomatic threats. Both have broad bipartisan support.

The idea of “automatic” draft registration originated within the SSS during the Biden Administration and was introduced in Congress in 2024 by a Democrat. But a database-driven process aligns perfectly with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and its penchant for automated aggregation, matching, and use of data originally collected for unrelated purposes.

“Automatic” draft registration won’t make a draft any easier to administer or enforce. “Garbage-in, garbage-out” merging of lists compiled for other purposes will result in a list of potential draftees and their mailing addresses that’s just as incomplete and inaccurate as the current one.

The draft still isn’t a feasible option, and abolishing the SSS remains the only realistic course of action. The lesson of the last forty-five years of draft registration, and of the quiet but persistent noncompliance by generations of potential draftees, is that young Americans want to make their own choices of which wars, if any, they will fight. We should thank them for their service in countering military adventurism. We’ll need to keep reminding military planners that calling draft registration “automatic” won’t make young people submit to a draft without resistance.

Keep reading

Germany Enacts U.S.-Style Registration for Military Conscription

On Friday, December 5, 2025, the German Bundestag gave its final approval to a law that, beginning in 2026, will require all German men to fill out a registration form for military service when they reach age 18. Responses to the questionnaire will be used to generate a list of potential draftees to be used if military conscription is activated.

On the day of the vote in the Bundestag there were anti-draft rallies and marches in Berlin (5,000 people), Hamburg, and other cities, and a School Strike Against the Draft that involved students in at least 90 cities and towns throughout Germany.

This revision to German military conscription law has been widely misunderstood, with many reports the scheme is voluntary (it isn’t, although the amount of the administrative fine for noncompliance has not yet been determined) or that it reflects a rejection of conscription. In fact, it’s intended by the German government to make a show of increased readiness to quickly implement an on-demand draft whenever that is deemed “necessary”.

Viewed from the USA, what’s most striking about the new German law is how much it resembles the Selective Service registration scheme in effect in the USA since 1980. The new German law also draws on some of the proposals considered by the U.S. National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service (NCMNPS) in 2017-2020 for (1) advance collection of additional information about potential draftees’ skills and fitness for military assignments and (2) increased use of the Selective Service registration process as a marketing opportunity to promote voluntary enlistment in the military.

The new German law appears likely to backfire on the government in the same ways that draft registration has in the USA: (1) making potential draftees and older allies more aware of the government’s commitment to the legitimacy of military conscription and desire to be prepared to activate a draft whenever it so chooses; (2) catalyzing anti-draft organizing and draft resistance, and (3) providing potential draftees with the opportunity, through the relatively low-risk tactic of foot-dragging or ignoring demands for self-enrollment in the conscription registry, to show their unwillingness to be drafted. That was the message sent by the failure of draft registration in the USA. We hope and expect that young Germans and their older allies will send the same message through their response to the new German military conscription law and personal information collection program.

In the USA, voluntary compliance with the legal mandate for self-registration was low from the revival of the program in 1980, and collapsed completely once it became clear that enforcement against passive mass noncooperation was impossible and wouldn’t be attempted.

The biggest mistake of the U.S. government when it reinstated the requirement for young men to register for the draft in 1980 was to take young people’s subservience for granted and not make any plans for enforcement. The brief round of show trials of non-registrants for the draft in the U.S. in the 1980s was a public relations disaster for the government. That was in significant part because it was a hasty and somewhat desperate response to an unanticipated crisis of public confidence in the registration system and contingency plans for a draft prompted by growing public awareness of widespread non-registration.

Germany appears to be making the same naïve mistake today. I can find no evidence of any plan by the German government for enforcement of the registration requirement against the inevitable resistance, both active and passive.

Keep reading

France Follows Germany with New (Voluntary) Military Conscription Plan

If you want peace, prepare for war. French President Emmanuel Macron appears to be the latest European leader embracing that ancient maxim, launching a new national military service plan Thursday as France seeks to address shortfalls in its armed forces amidst growing concerns over Russia’s geographical ambitions beyond the war in Ukraine.

Macron announced volunteers – not forced conscripts – aged 18 and 19 will start serving next year in a 10-month new military service programme alongside 6.5 billion euros ($7.6 billion) in extra military spending in the next two years, AP reports.

Germany has already announced it hopes to use the same method to boost its enlistments, as Breitbart News reported. Berlin’s plan remains to be approved by parliament.

“A new national service is set to be gradually established, starting from next summer,” Macron said in a speech at the Varces military base, in the French Alps.

Young volunteers will serve in France’s mainland and oversea territories only, not in France’s military operations abroad, Macron said.

The AP report notes France’s military currently comprises around 200,000 active personnel and over 40,000 reservists, making it the second largest in the European Union, just behind Poland. France wants to increase the number of reservists to 100,000 by 2030.

Macron’s announcement follows the French Chief of Defence Staff warning earlier this month that to present a credible deterrence against Russian aggression in Europe, France’s civilians must stand behind the military, be “prepared to accept losing its children” and “prepared to suffer economically.”

Keep reading

Liberal Actress Angelina Jolie Makes Unannounced Visit to Ukraine, and Watches Her Bodyguard Get Instantly Mobilized for the Front

Did she bail out the bodyguard or was he sent to the front?

When Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie decided to make a unannounced visit to war-torn Ukraine, she didn’t imagine that she would witness first-hand a grave problem in its society: the prospect of immediate – and forceful – mobilization for combat.

Rumors have swirled online that Jolie had been paid $20 million by USAID for her first visit – but no corroboration was ever found.

During her first visit in 2022 to Lvov in western Ukraine, the air raid sirens sounded, making for an interesting photo op for the star.

Her second visit, this time to frontline areas in Kherson, was also no without some drama, as her surprise appearance was nearly spoiled by military recruiters, who grabbed her bodyguard (or driver, or ‘guide’) and questioned him why he had not enlisted for the army.

The Telegraph reported:

“The Hollywood actress ventured to the southern cities of Mykolaiv and Kherson on her latest humanitarian mission to the war-torn country, meeting volunteers and medics forced to live underground to escape attacks from Russian troops.

But the unannounced visit nearly descended into chaos after a member of her entourage, believed to be a driver, drew the attention of military recruiters at a checkpoint a few hours north of their first stop in Mykolaiv.”

Keep reading

Ukraine’s ‘Busification’ — forced conscription — is tip of the iceberg

“Busification” is a well-understood term in Ukraine and refers to the process in which young men are detained against their will, often involving a violent struggle, and bundled into a vehicle — often a minibus — for onward transit to an army recruitment center.

Until recently, Ukraine’s army recruiters picked easy targets. Yet, on October 26, the British Sun newspaper’s defense editor, Jerome Starkey, wrote a harrowing report about a recent trip to the front line in Ukraine, during which he claimed his Ukrainian colleague was “forcibly press-ganged into his country’s armed services.”

This case was striking for two reasons; first, that the forced mobilization of troops is rarely reported by Western mainstream media outlets. And second, that unlike most forced conscriptions, this event took place following the alleged commandeering of the Western journalists’ vehicle by three armed men, who insisted they drive to a recruitment center.

There, Starkey reported, “I saw at least [a] dozen glum men — mostly in their 40s and 50s — clutching sheafs of papers. They were called in and out of side rooms for rubber-stamp medicals to prove they were fit to fight.”

The process has drawn criticism after high-profile incidents where men have died even before they donned military uniforms. On October 23, Ukrainian Roman Sopin died from heavy blunt trauma to the head after he had been forcibly recruited. Ukrainian authorities claim that he fell, but his family is taking legal action. In August, a conscripted man, 36, died suddenly at a recruitment center in Rivne, although the authorities claim he died of natural causes. In June, 45-year-old Ukrainian-Hungarian Jozsef Sebestyen died after he was beaten with iron bars following his forced conscription; the Ukrainian military denies this version of events. In August, a conscript died from injuries sustained after he jumped out of a moving vehicle that was transporting him to the recruitment center.

Look online and you’ll find a trove of thousands of incidents, with most of them filmed this year alone. You can find videos of a recruitment officer chasing a man and shooting at him, a man being choked to death on the street with a recruiter’s knee on his neck. Many include family members or friends fighting desperately to prevent their loved one being taken against his will.

If videos of this nature, on this systemic scale, were shared in the United States or the United Kingdom, I believe that members of the public would express serious concerns. Yet the Western media remains largely silent, and I find it difficult to understand why.

In November 2024, Ukraine’s defense minister Rustem Umerov claimed that he would put an end to busification. It is true that Ukraine has been taking steps to modernize its army recruitment and make enlistment more appealing to men under the age of 25. Yet, there is little evidence that those efforts are having the desired effect. And after a year, busification only appears to be getting worse, yet remains widely ignored by the Western press.

Keep reading

Shocking scenes as huge crowds of ultra-Orthodox Israelis protesting against military conscription throw bottles at female reporter before boy, 15, falls to his death during demonstration

A massive rally of ultra-Orthodox Jewish Israelis protesting against military conscription today turned violent as the crowd threw bottles at a female reporter and a teenage boy fell to his death. 

A packed crowd of an estimated 200,000 people, mostly men, clogged the roads around the Route 1 highway leading into Jerusalem today. 

Photos showed many had climbed atop roofs of buildings, a gas station and onto cranes.  

Video footage showed the agitated crowd stalking a female reporter from Israeli news outlet V1 who was covering the event before chucking glass bottles at her.  

Crowds of men set fire to pieces of tarpaulin as hundreds of police officers cordoned off several roads across the city. 

Demonstrators packed onto the tops of buildings, petrol stations, bridges and balconies above a sea of fellow protesters, some of whom held signs declaring: ‘Better to go to prison than to the army.’

A helicopter flew overhead as people gathered to take part in collective prayers. 

The Israeli ambulance service said a 15-year-old fell to his death and police said they had opened an investigation into the incident.

Keep reading

NATO state brings back military draft

Croatia’s parliament has voted to reinstate compulsory military service, ending a 17-year hiatus. The Balkan country abolished the draft in 2008, shifting to a fully professional army.

The move comes amid a broader trend among NATO and EU members of reviving conscription and boosting military budgets, citing current geopolitical tensions, particularly the Ukraine conflict.

Under the new law, around 4,000 recruits will be called up each year in five groups for two months of basic training at military facilities across Croatia, state broadcaster HRT reported on Friday. The program – estimated to cost €23.7 million annually – will begin in early 2026. Participants will receive around €1,100 per month, plus travel and leave expenses, and credited work experience.

Keep reading

Thousands of Orthodox Jews rally in New York to protest change in Israel’s military draft rules

Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews packed the streets and sidewalks for blocks around the Israeli consulate in New York City on Sunday to protest issues including a potential end of an exemption for religious students from compulsory service in Israel’s military.

The protest at the consulate, a block from the United Nations campus in Manhattan, illustrated the complex relationship between Israel and segments of the large population of very religious Jews in New York and its suburbs.

The two influential, and often rival, grand rebbes of the Satmar community both called on adherents to participate in the demonstration. The Central Rabbinical Congress of the U.S.A. and Canada, a consortium of Orthodox Jewish groups, said it helped organize the protest.

It comes after Israel’s Supreme Court last year ordered the government to begin drafting ultra-Orthodox Jewish men into the military. There had been a longstanding enlistment exemption – dating to the founding of Israel in 1948.

The ultra-Orthodox worry that mandatory enlistment will impact adherents’ ties to their faith. But many Jewish Israelis have argued that an exemption is unfair. Rifts over the issue have deepened since the start of the war in Gaza.

Rabbi Moishe Indig, a Satmar community leader, said he’s not sure organizers expected so many people to show up but he said he felt urgency building around the issue.

He said he was appreciative of the governments in New York and the U.S. “for giving us the freedom and liberty to be able to live free and have our children go to school and study and learn the Torah.”

Keep reading